First of all, I've been building computers for at least 10 years now so I pretty much know my way around the hardware & software but I figured it couldn't hurt to give the forums a shot, so here I am...

The board is an EP-8KTA, the chip is a AUD Duron 900. I hooked up just the necessities which is the RAM, video card, processor, power, cooler fan power, & the power switch - won't fire up at all, the fan wouldn't turn even for a second. The RAM & video card were tested elsewhere so I know those work fine, the processor & board however I can not test considering I do not have any other chips or boards to do that kind of testing.

Now with most boards, there are 3 things that I need to set up for the processor...The mhz setting (50, 60, 66, 100, 166, etc; etc.).The multiplier for the mhz.The voltage.With this board however, there is only the voltage & the mhz setting, there's no multiplier which I'm not used to but I'm guessing that it is set along with the voltage. I've gone through the manual a few times on this & there is no multiplier listed there either.

So that's my dilemma, I can't get the board to power up & was curious if any of you out there in AMD land had any advice for me. Your time is appreciated either way, thanks.

Sounds like a problem I've got going. It is either the chip or the board or most likely both. Be very careful testing them with working parts as it seems that one fries the other. I've followed this effect through at least 6 boards and as many processors. I quetly gave up on AMD stuff last night and went to a PIII, was up and running in less than an hour with OS installed.

Make sure your FSB('CPU External clock' is set to 100MHz both in BIOS and via jumper on your motherboard(refer to you manual for details - i.e. location and correct setting of the jumper...if there is one).

Clear CMOS. Either by CMOS clear jumper or physical removal of CMOS battery for 7 seconds. (its a good number, and lucky too.)

Ensure correct jumper settings for "autodetect" of FSB and voltage. On the 8KTA+ there is an option to disable autodetect and select from dip switch.

Test PSU yourself, or get it tested professionally by an electrician. Better to discover that a bad PSU has fried one board and CPU rather than let it kill any more. - though not good to discover a bad PSU any time.

Even with a totally corrupt BIOS I would expect the fans to at least spin up shortly, even if nothing else happened. However, you can contact Epox tech support and order a replacement BIOS eeprom and swap the whole chip out.

I have seen PCI motherboard analysers for sale on ebay and other places on the intyweb, I'm not sure how sophisticated they are, probably not very, but they arent expensive, maybe getting one of them may help.